Economic and environmental considerations necessitate the removal of phenolics from waste streams. Pollution of aqueous waste streams with phenolics (e.g., phenolic dyes, tannins, etc.) is particularly insidious from an environmental point of view due to the known toxicity and objectionable color of phenolics.
Previous methods of purifying such aqueous waste streams have generally been time consuming, difficult and/or costly. Such methods have included biological methods (activated sludges or trickling filtration), ozone treatments and/or filtration through activated carbon.
To illustrate the problems, the biological systems can only be used to remove very minor amounts of the phenol; the ozone treatment requires extremely careful monitoring to match ozone with the particular phenol(s), a value which differs between phenolics; and the activated carbon system is extremely susceptible to plugging by organic matter. Removal of phenolics from organic media is even more difficult.
Thus, there exists a need for a new method of economically and conveniently removing phenolics from waste streams.